In recent years, people have started spending more and more time browsing content on the Internet, as opposed to traditional sources, such as television, radio, and print media. As a result, the value of advertising on web pages has risen significantly, and techniques for targeting demographics of interest have become very advanced.
Internet cookies have become a ubiquitous and invaluable tool for performing Internet advertising and other important online functions. Traditional techniques for targeting electronic advertising involve configuring users' Internet browsers such that third party cookies can be set, read from, and written to. When a cookie is set on a browser, one of the identifying elements of the cookie is the domain from which it was served. If an Internet user visits, for example, www.site.com and that site contains code to set a cookie, then that cookie will be set with “site.com” as its domain. Continuing this illustrative example, site.com can also embed code that pulls content, such as ads, from URLs that are not on the site.com domain and those ads can also set cookies. For example, site.com can have code on its page that pulls an ad from, by way of example, www.adnetwork.com. The ad will be served from adnetwork.com and will set cookies on the adnetwork.com domain.
Online advertising may be significantly enhanced by web browsers that, by default or by settings, allow third party cookies, and by people who permit visited sites to set and read third party cookies. Use of third party cookies enables ad networks to access cookies that they set across a wide network of websites, thereby enabling behavioral and contextual advertising to web viewers across many visited websites. Specifically, web browsers that are set to allow third party cookies will allow, for example, adnetwork.com to set its cookie despite the user having visited www.site.com. Furthermore, the same browser setting will also allow adnetwork.com to access any cookies set under their domain regardless of which site the Internet user is visiting.
By way of background, ad networks typically have hundreds or thousands of partners (often referred to as “publishers”) that publish online content along with “ad tags” provided by their partner ad network. For example, each of a news website (www.news.com), a blog (www.blog.com), and an informational website (www.info.com), among others, may engage an ad network to efficiently and profitably advertise to those websites' viewers. The ad network provides each of those sites with an ad tag having the ad network's domain, e.g., “adnetwork.com.” For any visitors, or more specifically, visitors' browsers that allow third party cookies, the ad network may access cookie data of visitors to its partners' sites (i.e., across its entire network of sites), even though those sites' domains (e.g., www.news.com, etc.) do not match the ad network's domain. Specifically, the ad network's ad tag on each site may access cookie data associated with the domain of the ad tag. As a result, the ad network may learn more about a user's browsing history across its network, and therefore more about the user's likely demographics, interests, purchasing goals, and other useful advertising information.
Each time an Internet advertisement is shown to a website visitor is known as an “impression.” When the user is shown the advertisement, the user may select, or “click,” on the advertisement, or may take another “action,” such as completing an online form to request more information. If the user later purchases the product, the purchase is referred to as a “conversion” of the impression. Advertisers may be interested in impressions (e.g., if they are trying to increase awareness of a brand), clicks (e.g., if they are trying to provide more information about a product), or conversions (e.g., if they are trying to make sales or get new users to sign up for services). Advertisers may pay advertising networks and therefore publishers based on, for example, impressions, clicks, or conversions over the course of an advertising campaign. Typically, an advertiser may have a spending plan that specifies how the advertiser wishes to spend its budget during a campaign.
Advertising networks rely on being able to accurately identify the person viewing an advertising creative in order to tailor the advertising creative to the user's specific interests, provide frequency capping, and provide other user specific functionality. In the world of behavioral advertising, the user's identity is often tied to a user profile (targeting profile) containing information about their demographics, interests, and programmatically determined properties (such as look-a-like segmentation). This allows the advertising creative to be highly targeted to the specific user, providing more relevant offers and opportunities and as a result improving click through and conversion rates.
Even though cookies enable advanced targeting and advertising to users whose browsers enable third party cookies, these technologies are unable to leverage browsing history, behavioral and contextual information, and other intelligence relating to a user when it is divided among multiple devices or browsers. Specifically, most modern users of the Internet often use more than one device to access the Internet over the course of a single day, such as, for example, a PC at home, a laptop at work, and one or more tablets and/or mobile devices throughout the day, whether employer-provided or personal. Because of the standards associated with existing cookies and browsers, the advantageous user IDs, browsing history, demographic data, etc., can only be stored in relation to a cookie stored for a particular browser on a particular device. Recent trends in mobile and tablet technology has meant that users are more frequently utilizing multiple devices to access the Internet and as a result see ads across many different devices or screens. Because online advertisers are interested in improved targeting to their intended audience, ad networks also have a strong interest in providing targeting to users across their various browsers and devices. Thus, the traditional method of identifying a user and tying a targeting to profile to a user's device has significant disadvantages, since the profile is effectively tied to a device and not to the real target: the user. Furthermore, many mobile devices do not permit third party cookies to be stored on the device, rendering the identification of the user via this method challenging. User targeting has been limited to device level targeting, instead of offering a more holistic view of a user's behavior online.
Accordingly, a need exists for systems and methods for improved online user and device ID management, and delivery of Internet advertising and content to devices matched to common users. More specifically, a need exists for systems and methods for matching users across various Internet-enabled devices, and to online advertising based on users' identities for targeted and behavioral advertising.